Fence, wall, whatever you call it, the barrier Israel is
building to seal off the West Bank is drawing a line through more
than the desert sands.
I write from Israel, where I have been observing a conference
held annually by the Bertelsmann Foundation to bring together young
German and Israeli professionals to examine the Middle East
conflict and Europe’s role therein. Last week, the group was
treated to a tour and presentation of what the Israel Defense Force
calls the “Seam Zone.” The program’s participants’ names are
omitted to encourage open conversation.
At an IDF base at Zur Natan, a breakfast buffet was laid out
neatly, as was the IDF’s agenda: to disabuse a group of Europeans
and some Israeli liberals of their misperceptions. Israel’s
fence/wall/seam zone has drawn fire at home and abroad because of
the image it evokes and because it cuts to the east of the Green
Line, Israel’s border before the 1967 war and the baseline of many
prospective peace deals.
A reporter for a weekly paper in Germany got the ball rolling by
asking whether there was any truth to a rumor in her country that
staff of the IDF had made a trip to study the Berlin Wall.
“Why would we do that?” a somewhat perplexed IDF spokesman
asked. “What could we possibly learn?”
And, anyway, the IDF spokesman wanted to make clear, this isn’t
a wall. There are sections of the Seam Zone that consist of wall
rather than fence, but they constitute only eight kilometers out of
140. These sections are along the Trans Israel Highway, a
North-South toll road that is under construction. The road is also
under fire from snipers in Palestinian towns along its route.
“It’s the only road where you pay to die,” an Israeli
newspaperman said later, on a visit to a section of the wall. “We
call it the death toll.”
Many in the group, both Germans and Israelis, seemed surprised
by how little wall was involved in the wall/fence. However, there
was still the question of the fence’s path. The left-leaning
Israelis, in particular, were upset, and they accused the IDF
spokesman of building a political fence meant to appease the
settlers.
“It seems that the fence is running away from the Green Line.
Why does it run away?” an Israeli television anchor asked.
The IDF spokesman said that the IDF had charted the course for
the line with only security in mind. He didn’t manage to convince
the objectors, but the spokesman did get their attention with two
videos.
“Is this the one of the Lebanese man and the donkey?” Israeli
Television cracked as the IDF cued up the films.
When the grainy infrared pictures appeared on the screen, there
was no donkey. But we were watching a security film from a fence at
the Lebanese border. A man was trying to sneak over the fence at
night, but he was visible to the cameras by his body heat. We saw
him creep up to the fence, carrying a bag. He threw it over,
climbed up the fence, climbed over the barbed wire, dropped to the
ground, and retrieved his bag.
It turned out he was only running hashish, the IDF spokesman
told us. But he just as easily could have been transporting a
bomb.
In the second video, two men are seen making their way toward a
security fence, again at the Lebanese border. One stops, and the
other walks up farther. The one farther advanced mounts a rocket
launcher on his shoulder, steadies, aims, and fires in a burst of
white light. He then dashes back to where his friend is hiding, as
his friend gives him cover with machine-gun fire.
The two were Hezbollah fighters firing at an Israeli town, the
IDF spokesman explained. There were actually four of them carrying
out that mission, he said. “Two are not with us anymore.”
Later in the day, at a checkpoint, we saw four Palestinian Arab
men handcuffed and blindfolded and left baking in the sun. Many of
the Germans snapped pictures wildly, looking horrified. The
Israelis seemed unaffected, and they theorized about why the men
were being detained.
The brutality of this permanent war, thrust upon the Israelis by
the terrorists, has been a shock for some of the Europeans here to
absorb. But it has been equally shocking for them to see how years
of unrelenting terror have numbed this country’s people.
With fences so easy to climb — and to fire rockets over — it
can be hoped that the Germans saw that Israel is within its rights
to draw the line wherever it sees fit.
